Chapter 32
Zogar
Kestra leads me to the rooftop, and I search the crowded bar, not finding Gabreal—yet again.
She sends and receives more messages on her phone, then takes me to a smoky cigar lounge.
Again, he’s not there, and after consulting her phone yet again, she takes me to a place called a bowling alley.
In this strange place, groups of demons are rolling large heavy balls toward wooden posts, trying to knock them over. For what purpose? Insanity.
And still, there’s no sign of Gabreal.
“Enough stalling!” I glare at Kestra. “Do you know where he is, or not?”
Putting her hands on her hips, Kestra shrugs, acting as if she’s as frustrated as I am. I don’t believe her. This is a game to her.
Her phone makes a sound, and she pulls it out to look at the screen. Her expression brightens, and she looks up toward me. “I know where he is!”
My hope rises for a split second, but then I glare. “I’ve had enough. I’m done.”
“Suit yourself.” She saunters away, her tail swaying in the opposite direction to her curvy hips.
Frowning, I follow, and she leads me into yet another elevator, where she tells me we’re headed to the screening room. I resist my urge to ask her what that means. I’ll see soon enough.
The elevator doors open to a darkened room, and heavy velvet curtains extend across the back, parted in the center to reveal an aisle sloping downward.
Rows of comfortable looking chairs sit on either side of the aisle.
Most are occupied, and a massive screen fills the front of the room, its proportions even bigger than the billboards I’ve seen on the street.
Projected onto the screen are images of various superi fucking—some of them viciously fucking helpless humans. The demons occupying the chairs are watching with rapt attention, many masturbating, others fucking their companions, and moans contaminate the air.
Kestra gestures toward two open seats. When I hesitate, she takes my wrist and tugs me in front of a chair that’s next to the aisle.
“Sit down!” says a demon, from one of the seats behind us.
“Fuck off.” I shake my head and glare at Kestra. “Where. Is. Gabreal?”
She gestures toward the screen.
The image has changed.
My legs give way, and I drop heavily into the chair.
Rosomon and Gabreal are filling the screen.
They’re on the rooftop of our building. My wife’s legs are shaking, and her face is flushed, almost as if she’s just had sex, but she would never—
Would she?
Rosomon does have two lovers outside our marriage, and I’ve told her she need not be sexually faithful. Has this demon seduced my sexually curious wife?
“Do you trust me?” Gabreal asks Rosomon, and she nods.
“Tell me,” he says.
She looks up at him with so much affection and desire that my stomach turns upside down. “You know that I trust you.”
“Show me,” he says. “Show me how much you trust me.”
Smiling, she nods, and her tiny perfect tongue slips out to swipe her upper lip. Her tongue barely makes an appearance, but the entire room makes sounds of interest, many leading forward in their chairs.
“She wants him,” a demon says from the back of the room.
“Can you blame her?” says another demon.
Rage and jealousy rise inside me, quickly combining into the toxic mix of betrayal. Rosomon is going to let this demon fuck her. Rosomon wants him to fuck her. And I’m being forced to watch.
Gabreal is serving me a taste of the cruel medicine I served Saxon and Tynan.
Does she know that I’m watching? That others are watching? Is she in on this plan?
Gabreal leads her toward the edge of the rooftop, and my betrayal-fueled anger shifts to fear. The danger she’s facing is much worse than the prospect of watching him fuck her.
“Isn’t the view beautiful?” he asks her.
“Very.”
“Get up on the ledge,” he says. “You can see even better from there.”
She looks at him with questions in her eyes.
“You said that you trust me.”
She raises a trembling hand to brush back a lock of her hair.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asks.
Her expression shifts. “Of course, it’s just that we’re so high off the ground. Almost as high as when I ride you.”
His expression darkens. “Obey me, and you’ll earn the right to ride my cock soon.”
The room erupts in chuckles and lewd noises.
Gabreal helps her onto the narrow ledge of the rooftop, more than fifty-four stories above the street below.
Once up there, she wobbles, and her hand reaches forward as if hoping to grasp onto the air. My chest freezes in fear, but she steadies herself, with her arm extended to the side as if she’s holding something. If demons could cast illusions, I’d think he’d made a railing for her.
Gabreal lets her go. “Walk in a straight line. Take your hand off the railing.”
Railing? There is no railing. I turn toward Kestra, but her rapt attention is focussed on the screen.
“Can Gabreal create illusions?” I ask her.
Kestra shakes her head. “Demons don’t have that type of magic.”
“Are you certain?”
She turns toward me. “Demons can alter the appearance of things, but they can’t create elemental illusions out of nothing. Only you mages and some of the fae can do that.” She says this as if explaining to a child.
Turning back to the screen, my throat closes, and my hands tighten on my thighs as I watch Rosomon take two slow steps along the narrow ledge at the side of the barren rooftop. Why would she take such a risk?
My heart blocks my throat as she takes more steps—five, six, seven. Then Gabreal jumps up, wraps his arms around her body, and turns her to face outward, toward the drop. Widely bracing his legs, he straightens his arms, lowering Rosomon forward at an angle, extending her over the edge.
“No!” I yell at the screen, earning several hushes from various demons in the room.
Kestra squeezes my arm. “He won’t let her die.” She turns back to the screen. “That’s not what he wants from her.”
My heart has risen to block my tightened throat, and my entire body seizes in fear. Gabreal is holding her waist, as she stretches her arms, leaning out. One small slip of his fingers, and she’ll plummet to the street below.
But he pulls her back and jumps down with her onto the roof’s gravel-covered surface.
Taking her hand, he leads her across the roof, and she trails her other hand beside her, as if touching something.
If demons can’t create illusions, then someone else is doing it, because Rosomon is clearly seeing and touching things that aren’t there.
And while my wife is adventurous, she would never have taken the risk she did on the edge of the rooftop. Not unless she believed she was safe.
The camera angle changes, and the entire room breaks out in oohs and ahs.
A stone table, more like an altar, has appeared. Around it, thirteen women stand, holding hands and wearing deep red hooded robes that shadow their faces.
“Rootbound mages,” someone says.
I should leave here. I should get to her as quickly as I can. And yet I feel paralyzed. Has someone cast a spell on me too?
“Remove your dress,” Gabreal says.
Rosomon quickly—eagerly—lifts the skimpy garment over her head and tosses it to the side. Her hips swivel. She’s aroused.
She’s going to fuck him. I can’t watch, but also can’t look away. He gestures for her to walk toward the table.
The mages break their circle, letting Rosomon and Gabreal pass, and then quickly reform it.
“Get on the bed,” Gabreal says. The platform is high, but he offers her no assistance, and I gasp as she climbs invisible steps.
The rootbound mages helping Gabreal are powerful. The thirteen have likely combined their inferior powers to create and sustain an illusion far stronger than any single basic mage could—a tangible illusion to rival some of my own.
Rosomon, sitting at the edge of the large marble table, spreads her legs and reaches toward Gabreal.
“Lie back,” he says. “Arms above your head.”
She obeys, and he fastens ropes around her wrists, securing the ends on rings at the top corners of the table. She doesn’t resist and watches him with obvious desire in her eyes.
“Spread your legs,” he commands. “Bend your knees.”
She does as he says. He slips ropes under her knees, then uses straps to bind her calves against her upper thighs, keeping her legs folded in half. Then he takes the ropes tucked under her knees, and uses those to spread her wide, fully exposing her sex, so red and slick with arousal.
“You remembered.” Her body undulates within her tight constraints as she tests them. “But this bed is hard. I’d prefer a repeat of the day we married—or something like we saw in that vampyre club. Can you change the illusion?”
I gasp. She thinks she’s with me.
An instant of relief floods my body, but it’s quickly replaced by fear. She hasn’t consented to any of this.
Pretending to be me, Gabreal is planning to rape her—or worse.